feminist friendly

Keisha Cole and Missy Elliot are reminding women of a very important lesson when in a relationship. If one's boyfriend is not loving them the way they want, then "let him go". Keisha empathizes with women everywhere.

I understand why you wanna try
Make him stay home late at night
But if wanna go he'll be gone no lie
I can't explain how many times I tried
How many times I cried

She, at one point or another, had been paranoid that her boyfriend was unfaithful. Keisha imparts many jewels of wisdom to women who are feeling they are not being loved.

You need to get it if he don't wanna
Love you the right way he ain't gonna
It ain't where he's at its where he
Where he wanna be

In the above lyrics, Keisha is reinforcing the idea that a woman who wants love should not wait. The key phrase is, "It ain't where he's at its where he wanna be". In other words, a man (or woman for that matter) is going to be where they want because they want to, and one cannot force their partner to be faithful. Instead of despair and paranoia, it is important that if a lack of love exists in a relationship, then one should acknowledge this and seek love elsewhere.

In the lyrics below, Missy Elliot warns women of how men who spend most of their time physically objectifying other women are not worth staying in a relationship with:

Yo man he be callin me back
Cause see I'm fine and a matter of fact
(Eh he he he he)
He asked how I do dat dat
Fit my jeans over baby fat
Listen
I don't know the type of tricks he playin
But I should warn you I don't want ya man

Episode after episode Kino is a heroine. At no point in this anime is she written to endure sexism. Many men whom she meets in her journey believe that they can assert their dominance on her and quickly find out they cannot. The women that Kino met during her journey were strong and independent women. One of characters invents an airplane in the world Kino lives in. This female engineer does not allow her fiance or any other male with political authority to stop her goal ... to fly. The women in Kino's Journey were, for the most part, not designated to gender roles established my patriarchy. Quite the contrary, the writer Keiichi Sigsawa, wrote a avant-garde seinen anime. The writer provided a television show that challenged gender roles and oppression in society.

The glorification of violence in this anime is a long time established patriarchal value, but because the focus was on a heroine, the reason behind the violence is questionable:

The use of violence and whether or not it can be justified is a recurring theme in Kino's Journey, from whether animals should be killed in order to sustain the life of others to whether an entire population should be destroyed in order to save two other civilizations. [link]

One might be able to categorize this anime as josei.